HOORAY FOR GAYS

If we conducted a pogrom against those who are left-handed or who have blue eyes we would be mocked for our absurdity and condemned for our ignorance. The days of pogroms and of such absurdity and ignorance are hopefully long past. We Westerners now live in a blissfully tolerant society and no group has so rapidly moved from the shunned to the wholly accepted as have gays. I reckon this is a mark of a developed civilisation and I here celebrate the distinctive and highly valued contribution of male gays to our society. I leave Les Girls to an informed lady chronicler.

The struggle for acceptance has been long and arduous. It is said that the Ancients were tolerant of gay relationships and while this may be broadly true, the evidence is contradictory. The Theban Band was a famous group of warrior male lovers, Plato recommended gay relationships and Roman Emperors from Augustus to Hadrian had their pampered boyfriends. Ancient pottery graphically promoted these liaisons, yet there were many, Aristotle included, who disapproved of what was seen as a frivolous aristocratic pastime. Eventually Theodosius and Constantine suppressed gays and when Christianity held sway, condemnation of gay behaviour was complete. The Ancients did not share our concepts of sexuality and easy conclusions are unwise.

The long Christian supremacy from the 4^th to the early 20^th century often cruelly persecuted or at least marginalised gays, who had to conceal their preferences sometimes on pain of death. Some great Renaissance artists, such as Michelangelo and Donatello, earned a homo-erotic reputation but were left alone. With the crumbling of Christian belief, these negative attitudes gradually changed. In Britain there were gay Victorian literary worthies, but Oscar Wilde came sadly unstuck though there was certainly a strong gay presence in the Bloomsbury group, including the brilliant talents of Lytton Strachey, Maynard Keynes and E M Forster. Across the Channel, matters were much more relaxed with Verlaine, Rimbaud, Proust, Gide and Montherlant climbing to the intellectual and literary leadership of France. Their proclivities however remained a private and undiscussed subject.

David by Donatello

In Britain, hostility to gays was rapidly declining and the watershed was the Wolfenden Report in 1957 which recommended "homosexual behaviour between consenting adults in private should no longer be a criminal offence". A cross-party consensus was established and legislation de-criminalising gay acts in private was accepted by Home Secretary Roy Jenkins in 1967. There remained many who were nonetheless uneasy at this development. In the US, events took a noisier turn. Gay behaviour was criminalised in many states, but an anti-police riot objecting to a NYPD raid on the sleazy Stonewall Inn, Christopher Street, New York in 1969 polarised opinion. Soon Gay Liberation became a progressive cause to the embarrassment of more moderate gays. Gay Pride festivities spread, giving a forum to the more exhibitionist and swishy members, but in time the full constitutional rights of gays were recognised.

Thus the Americas, North and South took on the same liberal attitudes as Europe and Australasia. Even Russia felt obliged to fall in line, though Putin’s welcome to gays at the Sochi Olympics was uttered through clenched teeth; the itch to wield the knout and the Cossack whip against such dissidents was barely suppressed. Of course there survived many pockets of hostility among the rednecks of the Bible Belt, among skinhead “queer-bashers” in Northern British cities, among the fascist hard core in Germany, Italy and France. The permissive viewpoint is far from universal. India criminalised gay sex in 2013, rather retrogressively, China is as ever enigmatic but the Islamic world is furiously hostile, especially the usual suspects, Iran and Saudi Arabia. Of the 54 African countries, 38 have anti-gay laws, hardly in the vanguard of progress.

Now science lends a hand to the gay cause. It seems likely that a gay nature is “hard-wired” into the embryo at the intra-uterine stage in the testosterone soup of the womb. Neuroscience points in this direction with all of us having a genetic variety of sexual natures which later Presbyterian upbringing, cold baths or Oedipal complexes will little change. If we are born gay or straight we can hardly ascribe guilt or blame to this outcome.

Yet the point is that gays are fun. Where would ballet be without Tchaikovsky, Nijinsky and Nureyev; or the theatre without Wilde, Coward, Maugham or Rattigan; or comedy without Frankie Howard, Kenneth Williams or Larry Grayson; or song-writing without Cole Porter or Ivor Novello; or diaries without Chips Channon, James Lees-Milne and Cecil Beaton; or politics without Michael Portillo or Peter Mandelson; or movies without Montgomery Clift, James Dean or Anthony Perkins? Who could replace wittily outrageous Gore Vidal and his Myra Breckinridge? Even forgetting such celebrities, who has not enjoyed the irrepressible cross-talk of gay friends or their gales of laughter at a well-told story?

They have won their battle and the tumult is over; full integration is proceeding – civil partnership giving way to gay marriage which even prudently-PC David Cameron supports. A gay US President cannot be far away, nor a gay UK monarch. Their sexuality should not define them; gays. like us all, will be judged by their virtues. As John Gielgud did and now Elton John, settling for cosy domesticity with their partners, surely the sensible thing is to grudge them nothing, wish them well and move on with living our own lives in our own unique fashion.

The Author when young! (after Michelangelo)

SMD

14.03.14

Text Copyright Sidney Donald 2014